Bioinformatics and Computational Biology in the Liberal Arts

This workshop is intended to bring together faculty at liberal arts focused undergraduate institutions who are involved in bioinformatics and computational biology (through teaching, research, or a combination of the two).  We aim to have a small workshop (25 participants maximum). The workshop will be organized around working groups focused on different topics related to teaching and conducting research at liberal arts institutions. The goal is to foster discussions about curricula, resources, collaborations, and opportunities for student and faculty research.

This workshop is funded by the National Science Foundation (Award Number 2046011) and the Alliance to Advance Liberal Arts Colleges (AALAC).

Direct any questions you may have to compbioworkshop.group@carleton.edu

Application

The workshop has funding for participant travel and lodging (through the NSF and AALAC); we will strive to support as many participants as possible.

Applications for the workshop are now closed.   

Workshop Organizers

• Jaime Davila (Math, Stats & CS, St. Olaf) - davila3@stolaf.edu

• Layla Oesper (CS, Carleton) - loesper@carleton.edu

• Getiria Onsongo (CS, Macalester) - gonsongo@macalester.edu

• Anna Ritz (Biology, Reed) - aritz@reed.edu

• Robin Shields-Cutler (Biology, Macalester) - rshield2@macalester.edu

Logistics

Workshop Days: Wednesday and Thursday June 25-25, 2025
Workshop Location: The Alumni Guest House at Carleton College, 100 College Street S., Northfield, MN 55057
Workshop Rooms: Alumni Guest House Meeting Room and Alumni Guest House Library/Lounge [Google Map Pin] [Interactive Map]

Air Travel: Minneapolis/St. Paul (MSP) airport is about a 45 minute drive from Carleton College.
Lodging: Check your acceptance letter to see if we reserved you are room at the Alumni Guest House.  Otherwise, you should make your own lodging arrangements.  We do have a room block available at the Fairfield Inns & Suites (114 2nd Street West, Northfield, MN 55057) which is walking distance to the meeting venue.  You can book a room here under our room block using this link.
Getting to Campus: Information about how to get transportation to Northfield from the airport can be found here. We will send out a spreadsheet for anyone who wants to coordinate rides to/from the airport to Northfield. 

Food: We anticipate offering coffee, breakfast, lunch and snacks throughout the day and one workshop dinner at a nearby restaurant on Wednesday night.

Reimbursement Instructions: Check your acceptance email for information on what will be reimbursed. Make sure to keep itemized receipts for all travel related expenses as those will be necessary for reimbursement.

• On April 28th all participants should have gotten an email with instructions for how to fill out a W-9 for reimbursement purposes.  If you didn't follow those instructions please contact Layla Oesper (loesper@carleton.edu) to have the W-9 form re-sent to you.

• Bring all itemized receipts you already have for travel related expenses to the meeting and submit them before leaving (we will provide instructions at the meeting for this).  If you are driving to the meeting, please bring a map that shows your round trip route (mostly we just need the total mileage) so we can reimburse you for that.

• All other itemized reciepts should be emailed to Layla Oesper (loesper@carleton.edu) no later than July 7, 2025.  This will allow us to process your reimbursements in a timely manner.

Schedule

A draft of the workshop schedule is available below.

Resources for Participants

Participants of the workshop can access the Google Drive where all the shared materials for the meeting will be located using this link (only members of the workshop have access to this drive).